Yvi

Con.txt, Day 1

I really, really want to say I rolled up to a house about seven or eight, but I actually tottered into the hotel a little before eleven, checked in with zvi at the registration table, noobishly babbled something along the lines of "OMG HAI I KNOW YOUR NAME FROM THE INTERNETS," and made a beeline for bironic as soon as possible since she was the only person I recognized. The two of us started making the rounds, checking out the publishers' tables, and I ran into ravenna_c_tan, who'd left me some lovely feedback just a few days before and who was just as awesome as this conversation implies.

hannah was at the same table and I started IRL trolling her about werewolf porn before she recognized me--so that was me racking up yet another faux pas, but it was good to see another familiar face for sure. Even though she said Tom Hardy's lips don't go with his face.

WHATEVER.





I also met v_greyson, who was dressed as Nightwing or Nightshade or something I'm not cultured enough to know about, and then I made everyone cringe by telling them about a local masquerade taking place that evening with the theme ~Tribal Nation~ and a mandatory facepaint and/or mask requirement. Pretty sure I made the right choice by not checking that out, even though I'd never been to a BDSM masquerade before.

Panels started at eleven, so I went to The Rule of Names, which was all about how corporations like Google are trying to pressure everyone into connecting their online identities while many of us sensible fandom folk prefer to keep them separate. There was a lot of chatting about how the power of anonymity can be a great way to lower one's inhibitions and filters, for better or for worse, and the rise of kink memes and anon memes.

Small Fandom Speed Dating was next, and it was an absolute blast. What happens is anyone who has a fandom they want to pimp writes the name of the fandom on one side of a card and their name on the other. Then, someone who's in the market for a new fandom blindly selects three cards, takes a seat at the front of the room while the three fandom pimps sit behind them and display their cards to the audience, and asks five questions that all three pimps answer without actually naming their fandoms. At the end, the questioner picks the fandom that sounds the most appealing to them, all is revealed, and another round commences with different fandoms.

It got off to a fabulous start when misspamela pimped the fuck out of Grimm during the first round. Some of the questions fielded were "What three books would your OTP bring to a desert island?" (a dusty tome with creepy pictures, something on art or pilates), "Where would an AU take place?" (18th century Germany), and "When would you drink during a drinking game for this fandom?" (every time someone makes up a fake German word).

Second round, deelaundry pimped Threesome while bironic pimped Roar, and then during the third round I got to go up and pimp Teen Wolf.

One of the questions was, "What are the top five kinks for your fandom?" and the first thing out of my mouth was, of fucking course, "KNOTTING!" (followed by alpha/omega, restraint--usually with chains, bestiality, and marking).

Later on, this showed up on the quotes board:



THAT'S RIGHT, TEEN WOLF KICKED OFF KNOTTINGWATCH. NO REGRETS. COME AT ME, BRO.

In response to the drinking game question, I said something like "every time the main character makes a face like he's having an orgasm but isn't actually having an orgasm, and every time something happens in a dimly lit part of an academic building" because, uh, accurate y/n? I also learned that cinco is into Scott/Stiles, too, which is a pairing I love even though Scott's kind of a dunce and Stiles/Awesome is my OTP forever.

During a later round, I got picked again and pimped Cracks, aka the lesbian boarding school movie of my heart. I picked up a few new canons to explore, starting with kiezh, who did a most effective job pimping two Naomi Kritzer books because I totally want to read them at some point now.

I'm also going to have to check out The Losers, Russian Sherlock Holmes, Martha Wells, and Miami Vice. WHAT IS TIME. HALP.

The quotes board continued to grow and be wondrous.



I took a walk around downtown after lunch with cesy, ciaan, corbae, and some other folks and had to stop to get a strategic shot of these scientific seats.



GAY WAS IN THE AIR THAT WEEKEND, I TELL YOU. AND ALSO AMOEBA.



Next, I hit up the panel on Gender and Sexuality, which touched on everything from misgendering skeletons during archaeological digs (sup, the_samosaurus) to the mistaken belief that queerness sprang fully formed from Western society like Athena wrapped in a Pride flag, which of course isn't the case at all. It was a little more srs bsns than I expected, but yet another reminder that there are oodles of folks in fandom who are smart as hell.

After that was the Ultimate AU panel, which was all about the cracktastic premises we love so much and why we gravitate towards them. I got to talk a little bit about Inception being a canon where you can make the characters do anything you want because dreams and yet we have a staggering amount of AUs where dreaming isn't a feature at all. There was also some discussion about whether AUs are a cop-out or a challenge, which is something I think can go either way--The Eagle fandom also has a ton of AUs, and I can see why it might be easier to take the characters you love and write about them, say, being rival bakers than writing about them during the conquest of the Germanic tribes. Because, let's face it, the former requires less research, less attention to historical detail, and still allows the author to reinterpret the characters they're the most interested in.

On the other hand, there's a difference between writing an AU where everyone is unrecognizable and writing an AU where the essence of the characters is still there, regardless of whether or not they're rival bakers or competitive cheerleaders or catboys in steampunk Victoriana. I firmly believe that if an author is good enough to take a whacked-out premise and sell me on it, then they've been successful.

People seemed to have a lot of feelings about which character traits are too integral to be changed, regardless of AU. Something that deelaundry mentioned was a football AU featuring House characters (none of whom are particularly built for football) and how the author refused to change the physical build of the characters to make it seem more realistic. So naturally, I used that as an excuse to jump in and talk about THard's Bane body and the plethora of size kink prompts that engendered, and then about THard slimming down while JGL beefed up to play a Jersey Shore douchebag (and mother of god, so many people just groaned at that so I had to specify he still looks lovely and it's just for a role) and how that influenced the sort of kink meme prompts popping up as well.

Holy textwall. Here, have some more of THard and his lips!



I could probably talk about AUs forever, but moving on.

Writing Trans Characters was really, really interesting. Lots of discussion about identity, fic featuring trans characters versus fic featuring genderswap, and the importance of always doing your research. Also made me kind of want fic where Steve is trans and is the most fierce MtF supersoldier ever.

Our table at the Disco Duck featured a plush Tony Stark + tentacles, which is another fic that should be written.



v_greyson and I lamented the lack of good dance music (sorry, but "Love Shack" is never appropriate for anything, even if it's a Canadian love shack), but as soon as we stepped away to check out the board game selection the tunes took a turn for the better and we hit the floor for awhile.

Then I went home, stayed up till the wee hours of the morn finishing a paper for class (which I got back today with a perfect score, hell yeah!), and drove back for the next day.

I'm going to try and be a little less verbose when I tackle that, but no promises.